THE 2,300 EVENING

THE 2,300 EVENING - MORNINGS DANIEL 8.

The first one we'd like to look at is referred to in Dan 8:13-14, here v13, one of the Saint's asks v13 “How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?”. The sanctuary refers to the Jerusalem temple, whilst the host, to the people of Israel. The reply is given in v14 [READ]. “And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

So we understand from these verses that,

1.      the vision would be for a period of 2300 days, or more accurately evening and mornings in the original Hebrew,

2.      that during this period the temple in Jerusalem and its people would be trodden under foot,

3.      but after this period the sanctuary would finally be cleansed.

Interestingly the whole vision, commencing in 8:1 through to v25, is referred to as the vision of the evening and morning, v26. The term is first used in Gen. 1:5 where the evening and the morning together were said to form a day. And in using the term it alludes to the evening-morning sacrifice spoken of in Num 28:4, which under the law required the offering of two lambs daily in the temple, one in the morning, and the other in the evening. So we see that the vision not only suggested that the temple and people would be downtrodden or suppressed, but it would be to such an extent that they would not be able to perform their normal temple worship until the end of the 2300 days.

So when  did it start. Well the vision concerned a Ram and an He-goat, recorded in v1-12. In v20 we are told that the ram represented the empire of the Medes and Persians and the goat empire of Greece, led as we know from history by Alexander the Great. [READ v20].

The first event that took place in the vision is recorded in v6-7 [READ].

The generally key dates and events of Alexander were: -

1.      His birth in BC 356.

2.      The succession of his father in BC 336,

3.      He took Thebes in BC 335

4.      He set out for Persia in the spring of BC 334.

5.      The battle of Issus took place in BC 333,

6.      He took Tyre in BC 332,

7.      Jerusalem in BC 332,

8.      He defeated Darius near Arbela in the autumn of BC 331.

9.      He took Babylon in BC 331 and Darius was assassinated in BC 330.

10.  He died at Babylon in BC 323.

We might normally be a little bit concerned about the accuracy of such dates, given the variety of different calendars and methods of dating years down through the ages, but in reality we understand these have more recently been substantiated from computer simulations of the planets and eclipses. Just before the battle of Gaugamela, Arrian a Greek historian records that there was an eclipse of the moon, which has been aligned with our calendar at 9pm on the 20th September, BC 331.

The first event, after the appearance of the two symbolic animals, was the running of the goat towards the ram, and the smiting of the ram and it’s two horns until they broke. This depicted the rapid conquest of Persia by Alexander. Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia at the start of the campaigning season of BC 334. Our May of that year found him at the river Granicus, a small river in North West Asia Minor: and it was there that he won his first victory over the Persians. We could however leave the start to the latest point that vision could permit when Jerusalem was taken, two years later in BC332. But if we adding 2300 years to BC334 we are brought to 1967 a very significant year for Israel, for on the 18^th May Egypt ordered the UN to remove its force from the Israeli border, and on the 5th June the 6 day war broke out leading to the liberation of Jerusalem itself.

Since 1967, Jerusalem has no longer been subdued in the same way it had been, but quite clearly the sanctuary has not yet been cleansed; in fact there is no sanctuary to cleanse at present. But the word “then”, doesn't strictly require the sanctuary to be cleansed immediately after the 2300 days are concluded, do they.

In fact Ez 45:19 indicates that the building and the cleansing of the temple will be performed by the master after his return, which we believe will take several years. Solomon's temple for instance took 7 years.

The important point to note however from this vision is that until the 2300 years of the vision were complete, the beginning of the millennium, the building and cleansing of the temple couldn't begin. We believe the 2300 years have concluded, and so the return of the master and establishment of the millennium are very close in the scheme of things.

Show 2300 Evening and Morning summary